My first encounter with some of the idiosyncrasies of editing the WIkipedia remains memorable; being told that you obviously don't understand your own work seemed bizarre at the time, but I was a Wikipedia Virgin (to use the title of that post). My purity is long gone now, with 13,618 edits on 1,390 pages since August 2006, and I've found more bazaar examples since, and learnt a lot about human complex systems in practice. Interestingly that was my main reason for getting involved in the first place.
The Wikipedia is a complex adaptive system and the evolution and modification of constraints provides a perfect experimental area. That aside it matters, the WIkipedia is the first port of call on most Goggle searches so accurate content is key. Its also addictive and you make some good friends!
Despite the frustrations experience tells me that in general right wins out in Wikipedia but there are times when it gets downright frustrating. Right finally won out, at least for the moment on British issues when two disruptive editors were proved sock puppets but it took a year! Thats the Good of the title. In comparison two currently unresolved issues show the dangers that are inherent in a system where some editors are better at playing the game that others.
For my example of the Ugly, we have a small group of single purpose editors who are focused on arguing that science demonstrates that non-whites are of inferior intelligence across a narrow range of articles. One editor has stood up to them (and summarises the issue well here), but has been subject to all manner of attacks using the control mechanisms of Wikipedia. That one is finally with Arbcom for resolution so hopefully it will be resolved.
In contrast we have a pretty outstanding content editor who is very poor at playing the game and has fallen foul of some key editors in consequence. I posted my concern about this case some time ago. Current attempts to get him readmitted are resulting in a split between those editors (the good guys) who feel that high quality content is worth putting up with some behaviour issues, and those (the misguided but mostly well intentioned) who regard any breech of the rules as grounds for exclusion. That's the Bad.
This worries me as qualified editors willing to put in the time are few and far between and the Wikipedia should stand or fall by its content. OK the community needs to moderate behaviour, but it should be a rigorous critical environment and one that foes not mimic the behavioral models of a victorian nursery. Jimmy Wales, if he is remotely interested, would rise considerably in my opinion if he weighed in on this last case. He was at least part responsible for it escalating it in the first place.
Comments (4)
I found similar issues and gave up years ago http://totalexperience.corante.com/archives/2007/08/31/design_thinking.php
And sadly, what it proves is that, as with other things, power is political -- those with the most endurance win. This also means that those with the least life win : )
Posted by Rotkapchen | June 12, 2010 3:05 PM
Posted on June 12, 2010 15:05
Good points... and I haven't made one wikipedia entry yet, but typically use it mostly for it's lists of resources and references, rather than the content.
While on the other hand I am 24, so I play games very often, and have played Massively-Multiplayer games for years, since their beginning... and one thing I know is that the player who is willing to spend 15 hours day, exploring, socializing, figuring things out, etc... WILL exponentially exceed the "casual" gamers... and this translates more often than not into the real world...
Its got to be a drastically low percentage of the mass population that actually care about being "involved" in similar fashion.
If something can be structured as a game for kids growing up now, I have complete faith in their ability to "solve" the "problem" in whatever fashion extremely faster than experts in the field... the problem is representing it as such an experience to the kids. They contemplate less permanences, accept more uncertainty, and expect more possibilities... meaning they are more vigilant and enduring.
If you havent looked much into massive multiplayer environments (or the nature of an "open world" game) much I would highly recommend it. I remember seeing one example was World of Warcraft releasing a new expansion that game experts thought would take months atleast to conquer, but was conquered in days, and the community utilized every social computing principle you could think of.
Posted by Mark Spivey | June 12, 2010 4:10 PM
Posted on June 12, 2010 16:10
Fascinating experience.
I remember a lot of people were very surprised to discover that a collaborative encyclopedia can equal or even surpass the quality of outcome of a few skilled editors. I was among them.
Yet we've found that well designed, flexible checks that get refined over time do permit quality information to be accumulated and filtered, through the work of a broad base of skilled individuals.
That doesn't alter the fact that every medium has its tradeoffs.
In tendentious issues in a regulated Wiki, the biggest gorilla in the room eventually has to give way to the cleverest monkey with the most endurance and motivation to push their agenda.
So we get a very different bias in Wikipedia than we would in an academic journal. But there is still a bias. The shift is away from the old Socratic dialog where the more persuasive speaker wins and toward more of a weighted vote on the truth through the mechanisms of editing.
That works beautifully for many things. I think it also tends to enshrine a kind of lowest common denominator "average" view of each subject, making it very difficult to find any real brilliance on a given topic, except sometimes by somehow knowing which links to follow. The point where the controversy remains alive on a subject is prior to the "cleanup" being done, after that the average view has been imposed and the dialog crystallized.
The understandable pressure to silence "ugly" people who insist there are legitimate meaningful differences between human groups as such is a good example. Their information is not right or wrong because of its attractiveness in the eyes of editors, and the criterion of attractiveness vs. accuracy is just the kind of tradeoff that we make in enshrining the average view.
Posted by Todd I. Stark | June 16, 2010 2:41 PM
Posted on June 16, 2010 14:41
The point surely is that these issues ARE revealed: it's impossible to have a completely non-biased view. Any text book will be influenced by the slant of its own authors and editors. The difference with wikipedia is that it is not a finite project - ever. It is a conversation - or a debate.
Also the fact that each bit of information is required to have a source helps a reader adjust his own approach to a post - look at that source list and let that influence how you read the entry as well.
Posted by Rebecca | June 18, 2010 9:25 AM
Posted on June 18, 2010 09:25